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2006 July 6
Summary 4: Research Skills
Friends,
Much of the conversation in this workshop emphasized research skills,
as distinct from methods, methodics, and methodology. Several notes
expressed interest in the occasional references and resources that
workshop participants posted. This 1,500 word summary (plus checklists)
offers a short, systematic selection of outstanding research resources.
Later this year, Design Research News will publish a deeper analytical
review of excellent research resources. (If you do not subscribe to DRN,
you will find a note at the end of this summary to tell you how.)
This summary differs from other summaries. It provides a short, useful
guide to resources on the skills we discussed. These books help teachers
and supervisors to transmit research skills more effectively, and they
will help research students to develop and improve their skills.
1) Research Skills: a Growing Literature
We face understandable problems in building a research culture for art
and design. Ours is a new research field, in contrast to fields with a
research culture that goes back through decades or even centuries of
development.
Humans construct and shape cultures through behavior and by encouraging
specific forms of behavior. In apprentice programs, modeling and
adopting behaviors creates tacit knowledge. Effective apprentice
programs require an environment well populated by skilled journeymen and
masters. Art and design schools differ from most research environments
because they lack a large enough population of skilled journeyman and
master researcher to anchor and embed research culture. The result is a
gap in cultural knowledge.
One way to improve the situation is by providing research students with
skill information and giving them courses that allow them to practice
the skills they study.
Despite the fact that other fields have well-established research
cultures, it is interesting to note that many fields face similar
problems. Until recently, oral tradition and a master-apprentice system
trained research students in most fields and helped transmit academic
research skills. These skills differ from field to field, and discipline
to discipline. They often differ among related sub-disciplines and they
may differ within the same disciplines in different universities and
nations. Nevertheless, most disciplines recognize a common core of
skills. Rugg and Petre (2004: 6-7) describe these common skills in their
book on PhD research.
The enormous recent growth of universities and the explosion of
research training and doctoral programs have changed the situation in
nearly every field. The shift to the Bologna 3+2+3 system makes problems
even worse. The intense, highly selective relationship that once existed
between doctoral supervisors and candidates has shifted to
curriculum-based of teaching and learning. The 8-year Bologna scheme
reduces the former time for research training and doctoral completion in
most fields by anywhere from 2 to 5 years, depending on the former
patterns and norms of any individual university. With many more students
and far less time, it is impossible to rely on the small-scale, intense
practices that once led to graduated doctors.
Even in the past, however, research training and supervision was not
perfect. Supervision skills differed, excellent researchers might be
poor teachers, access to opportunities varied. These differences stay
with us, even as the situation becomes more difficult for everyone.
As a result, scholars in all fields face some of the problems we face
in art and design. Today, we are fortunate to have a growing literature
of resources to help individuals and schools to solve these general
problems.
This growing literature outlines and explains the craft, guidelines,
and traditions of research. These books can help to teach and develop
good research habits, habits of mind and habits of behavior. These
resources can help us to shape a research culture.
This is a short, selective bibliography of useful books. This is not a
list of books on research methodology, methodics, method, or technique.
These books address the larger habits of mind within which specific
research acts take place.
2) The craft of research
Booth, Wayne C., Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams. 1995. The
Craft of Research. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
This is a central volume in the series of books on different aspects of
the profession and practice of research from the University of Chicago
Press. It is a superb introduction to research issues.
3) Supervising the PhD
Delamont, Sara, Paul Atkinson, and Odette Parry. 1997. Supervising the
PhD. A Guide to Success. Buckingham, England, and Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania: The Society for Research into Higher Education and the
Open University Press.
The issue of research supervision is now a central theme in many
fields. The skill of tutoring and supervising research is even more
difficult to acquire than the skill of doing research. In theory,
studying for a PhD should help the doctoral student to develop research
skills. No degree programs or general courses train research
supervisors. Greater attention to the issue of supervising research
students means that this literature is an important contribution. This
book is one of the first and still one of the few that helps
supervisors, whatever field they work in.
(3) Working for a PhD
Peters, Robert L. 1997. Getting What You Came For. The Smart
Student’s Guide to Earning a Master’s or Ph.D. New York: The
Noonday Press.
Rugg, Gordon, and Marian Petre. 2004. The Unwritten Rules of PhD
Research. Maidenhead and New York: Open University Press.
Several dozen books offer advice on earning a research degree. Most are
pedestrian. Some are uninformative. A few bad books will mislead
students who do not know enough to ignore incorrect information and
problematic assertions.
These two books are useful and well structured. These cover all fields,
providing information on general research issues and skills, as well as
useful information on surviving and thriving as a doctoral student. I
recommend these books to students and to their supervisors.
4) Research careers and academic life
Sternberg, Robert J. 2004. Psychology 101 1/2. The Unspoken Rules for
Success in Academia. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological
Association.
Feibelman, Peter J. 1993. A Ph.D. Is Not Enough! A Guide to Survival in
Science. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.
One common gap in doctoral education involves helping research students
prepare for the transition from study to career. These two books are
particularly helpful. The first covers all fields. While the second is
written for the sciences, it offers ideas that every scholar can use.
5) Scholarly publishing
Huff, Anne Sigismund. 1999. Writing for Scholarly Publication. Thousand
Oaks, California: Sage Publications.
Silverman, Franklin. 1999. Publishing for Tenure and Beyond. Westport,
Connecticut: Praeger.
Two excellent books address the craft of scholarly publishing. Huff’s
book addresses the art of writing. Silverman discusses the relation of
publishing to career development, offering important advice on
conceptualizing and preparing a publishing strategy.
6) Presenting research
Anholt, Robert R.H. 1994. Dazzle ‘Em with Style. The Art of Oral
Scientific Presentation. New York: W. H. Freeman and Company.
Conferences and seminars are a central medium for sharing research and
for becoming visible in a research field. Many books now help students
– and others – learn how to present findings in seminars and at
conferences.
The best of these is Robert R. H. Anholt’s book. Anholt, a professor
at Duke University Medical Center, has been helping students in many
fields learn to succeed on the conference circuit.
While this book is written for natural scientists, it offers equally
valuable advice for the humanities and social sciences. The title is too
catchy, but the book is solid, concise, and well crafted:
7) A grand overview of art and design research
Pirkko Antilla’s book and CD are unique. Anttila was Finland’s
first professor of crafts. This book on research methods is a
masterpiece of its kind. She wrote this book to help scholars in arts,
crafts, and design develop a research tradition. She surveyed research
methods and approaches across many fields, summarizing central themes
and common issues. Then, she structured a book that shows the researcher
how and why to make specific methodological choices, and then she gives
rich bibliographic data that helps the scholar locate deeper and more
extensive information for each choice.
This book is thorough and extensive in structure. It is so broad in its
applied value across fields that scholars from economics and biology to
history, anthropology, and information science now use it.
While the book is in Finnish, the diagrammatic structures are so clear
and the bibliographic compilations so useful that scholars who do not
speak Finnish can use it as a source guide and checklist.
8) Have your library order these ten books
Every art and design school library should have these books.
If you are a research student, the time you invest in reading these
books will be time gained in developing a successful research career. I
know you will not read every word. I also know that you’ll learn a lot
by careful browsing.
If you teach and supervise research, you may already know these books.
If you don’t, you should. Those of us who are paid to teach and
supervise research owe it to our students and we owe it to ourselves to
know this literature – and use it.
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS
Professor
Dean
Swinburne Design
Swinburne University of Technology
Melbourne, Australia
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Ten Outstanding Research Resource Books: a Checklist
Anholt, Robert R.H. 1994. Dazzle ‘Em with Style. The Art of Oral
Scientific Presentation. New York: W. H. Freeman and Company.
Anttila, Pirkko. 1996. Tutkimisen taito ja tiedon hankinta. Taito-,
taide, ja muotoilualojen tutkimukesen tyvoevaelineet. Helsinki: Akatiimi
Oy.
Booth, Wayne C., Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams. 1995. The
Craft of Research. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Delamont, Sara, Paul Atkinson, and Odette Parry. 1997. Supervising the
PhD. A Guide to Success. Buckingham, England, and Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania: The Society for Research into Higher Education and the
Open University Press.
Feibelman, Peter J. 1993. A Ph.D. Is Not Enough! A Guide to Survival in
Science. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.
Huff, Anne Sigismund. 1999. Writing for Scholarly Publication. Thousand
Oaks, California: Sage Publications.
Peters, Robert L. 1997. Getting What You Came For. The Smart
Student’s Guide to Earning a Master’s or Ph.D. New York: The
Noonday Press.
Rugg, Gordon, and Marian Petre. 2004. The Unwritten Rules of PhD
Research. Maidenhead and New York: Open University Press.
Silverman, Franklin. 1999. Publishing for Tenure and Beyond. Westport,
Connecticut: Praeger.
Sternberg, Robert J. 2004. Psychology 101 1/2. The Unspoken Rules for
Success in Academia. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological
Association.
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